Dual Life
In one of my earlier blog’s I depicted war, like theater, so now I am going to somewhat revisit that idea. An actor at a live play is much different then one on TV or in the movies. Those scenes are shot over and over the best of them sliced together. On a stage it is alive the actor is a person playing a person, wanting you not to see them, but who they are pretending to be. This is called the willing suspension of disbelief it is a quid pro quo; the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally suspend their judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment. Giving the actor and spectators a moment of duality! It this duplicity that stuck me when I was watching, the movie Schindler’s List reading the graphic novel Maus, both depicting the Jews holocaust of World War II and then reading a article in the Washington Post about security issues in Iraq and the many forms that duality can take.
For Schindler’s List and Maus part of this was the black and white qualities how shadow and contrast played the role of Angel for bright and Devil for dark. The physicality of the worlds how the splendor was exposed with clarity to enhance the prosperity lost. In Maus this is done with a half page drawing of a large dinning room viewed through a just as large window with the of the captions saying
“When first I came home it looked exactly so as before I went…it was still so luxurious. The Germans couldn’t destroy everything at one time”
Since I am speaking on Maus I should talk about its other duplicities. It greatest asset is the fact that it is a graphic novel. This is a special type of duality just in the way you read it you need to read it with one eye on the words and the other on the drawings. They share the world in a symbiotic relationship much like the live theater I feel this form of comic is as close as you can get to that. You are pulled into the world by the pictures and then hammered home by the words.
The fact that the Jews are mice and the Germans cats, this is of course and allusion to the idea of the cat and mouse games the played for their very lives. There is the father son relationship with it moment of good like when his father draws on his sketchbook to show the elaborate hiding places.
“Show to me your pencil and I can explain you such things it’s good to know exactly how was it”
Then there is the bad the constant fighting or in the writers eye the nagging just to get the story. This is seen when his father calls him to help and he decides it better to not go and face that feeling.
“No way I’d rather feel guilty!
Then the biggest Duality that is shared by both Schindler’s List and Maus is the dual people that you become to survive for me this is best seen in Schindler’s List with Oscar Schindler he is a Nazi who sole purpose was to get rich. He used the Jewish investors the real man to run every thing was Itzhak Stern, but at the same time that he bribe his way to the top he made sure food, water and life was given. He gave away a fortune and as depicted in the movie wept saying
“I could have done more, this car Göth would have bought this car that 4 more I could have saved”
This brings me to, yet one more double-dealing, the market Schindler’s List, Maus and Washington Post in the first two it the black market where everything is sold for survival even to the last as for the Iraq it just the survival of the market. The article that stuck home for me was one telling of how a markets in Baghdad are prime targets.
“Sabah Abd’s fruit stand is a few feet from the concrete barrier dividing Baghdad’s Sadriya market from a bus depot that was bombed April 18 in one of the deadliest attacks since U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major operation in February to secure the capital… But only three days after the attack, Abd was back at his stand, charred vehicles still littering the parking area a few yards away. “My wife said, ‘If you go there, I will divorce you,’ but what can I do? There is no work outside,” he said”.
Here the simple needs of living are again being tested. The biggest test is how to remain secure and profitable. To have a world that is split.
“It’s a constant trade-off between security and convenience,” Dodd acknowledged. “We could wall this whole place in, and nothing would happen. But economically, that’s not viable.” Hussein said he might eventually go elsewhere to find another job. But for now, he is staying. “Maybe it will get better,” he said. “We’re waiting for security.”
How does this tie into the other well look at the fact both markets are place where for just that moment in time those that are oppressed have a bit of power a say in what then need and what they are willing to do for it. This human trait is seen best in theater we are moved, by something we know is not real, but the universality of it draws us in. Humanity has way of showing the best it has to offer in the worst places and in the briefest of moments. These are three stories have captured one of those moments for Schindler’s List and Maus it the will to go on, and live for the Iraqis it simple to go on with life.
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Schindler’s List Universal Studios 1993
